Of well bound books and piece work

Republican Delegate for the 64th District Emily Brewer during the first day of the Virginia General Assembly at the State Capitol in Richmond on Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2018.

Republican Delegate for the 64th District Emily Brewer during the first day of the Virginia General Assembly at the State Capitol in Richmond on Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2018. (Aileen Devlin/Daily Press / Daily Press)

Poring over the Code of Virginia, prepping for a General Assembly session, can mean stumbling across some archaic bits of state law.

So — and who knew — city and county treasurers, those good civil servants who collect personal property and other local government taxes and fees are required by law to “provide and keep a well-bound book, in which he shall make an entry of all warrants legally drawn upon him by the governing body and presented for payment.”

As with the those big, dust covered books of deeds or judgments that court clerks once maintained, there are now less cumbersome but equally tamper-proof ways of keeping track of the legal paperwork of money obligations.

Virginia also happens to be only state that hasn’t updated its minimum wage law to end an exemption for workers who are paid on a piece work basis — that is, a set rate based on the amount of work they do, rather than the hours they work. Federal law already says piece work rates have to yield a worker at least what the minimum wage provides, so in theory we shouldn’t see farm-workers pulling tobacco or brickmasons laying a new wall all day for a weekly gross of less than $290. Virginia law does not require this.

But just to make sure Virginia labor law enters the 20th century (the 1938 minimum wage law was expanded to cover farms and construction sites where piecework was particularly common in 1967). state Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax, wants to strike the piecework exemption in Virginia’s minimum wage law. (The law would still say “newsboys” and “shoe-shine boys” are exempt from the minimum wage law’s protection.)

“Every other state has eliminated the minimum wage exemption for piece work,” Howell said. “It is also something of a legacy issue for me. Before she had me, my mother was a union organizer in Rhode Island. Her focus was organizing piece workers, She had endless stories of the difficulties and abuses they faced.”